Page 138 of Filthy Royal

“There’s still a chance Darvish will issue the counterorder.” A tiny V formed between her perfect brows. “I get the impression he doesn’t want me dead.”

Damien got that impression too, and he had a bad feeling he knew exactly fucking why as well.

“But if you know Darvish at all,” Scarlett continued, “you’ll know he’d prefer to have every scrap of information destroyed rather than have it end up in the hands of an enemy. That goes for loose ends too.” She gestured to herself.

Knot him.Damien snarled low. He’d dragged Scarlett into a fucking war zone and put a target on her back. “We arenotdying. Nor are we letting any important intel be destroyed.”

“We’ll see.” She appeared disturbingly unfazed by the possibility of her own death.

It made him angry and even more determined to find what they needed and get the hells out of that room so he could figure out what was really going on with Scarlett.

The alarm in his gut, which had only gotten worse since they’d encountered Stormhart and her brother, was now at an all-time, churning high.

But if the guards were coming soon—and the flammable gas not long after that—he needed to make good use of what time they had.

“What is this place exactly?” He spun in a slow circle once again. No guards had jumped out at them, but that didn’t mean someone wasn’t lurking. He’d already identified two potential ambush sites.

But it was hard not to get distracted.

There were vid screens everywhere. Crammed onto every wall, the ceiling, and even above the huge, sleek desk in the middle of the room.

Thousands of small black square screens, each beaming out a scene in a different setting.

He scanned one wall and caught sight of a yellow-skinned Alpha hunched over a bench, peeling alarnigfruit in a sad, derelict room. In a different vid frame, he saw two security guards rutting an omega in a dark alley. In another, a furry male with blue skin was taking a shit while another stood by some fancy sink brushing his fangs. Other monitors showcased an omega sobbing in the arms of another behind a curtain, a crowd walking through the market, six lumps sleeping in a narrow bed, one Alphahole beating another in a backroom, four cage fighters thrashing each other on some mats, and a six-armed dealer at some busy gambling den, swiping a fallen chip and slipping it into his back pocket.

From the mundane to the miserable to the sinister, every spectacle of Golden Dome existence was on display.

It was obvious, too, that no one on the vids had any idea they were being recorded.

“I already told you.” Scarlett crossed the threshold and moved toward the desk. “Hells.”

The tightness in Damien’s chest traveled down to his balls. He didn’t like this one fucking bit.

Same went for the “I’m determined to be strong” look Scarlett fixed on her face the moment they stepped onto this floor.

As if she could fool him.

He could tell being here scared her.

He grabbed her around the waist and, as gently as possible, pinned her to his chest.

“Hey!”

“You stay with me until this room is secured.”

She sighed but didn’t protest. Probably because she realized it was futile.

Doing his best not to let the softness of her ass against him be a dangerous distraction, he moved in front of his first target area.

There were two other doors in the room: one on the wall to the right side of the desk, another behind it.

He thrust Scarlett behind him, ensuring his body blocked hers, then, one hand holding her wrists, he slammed his palm on the keypad and brought his laser back up.

The door slid open with ease.

Peering inside, he found no live threats, only four walls lined with floor-to-ceiling storage units full of drawers.

Damien stepped into the room and tugged at one of the drawers. It opened easily, revealing slots for at least a thousand vid sticks, each filled and labeled with a number and letter code.

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